How to think beyond sovereignty: on Sieyes and constituent power

Historians and political theorists have long been interested in how the principle of people’s power was conceptualised during the French Revolution. Traditionally, two diverging accounts emerge, one of national and the other of popular sovereignty, the former associated with moderate monarchist deputies, including the Abbé Sieyes, and the latter with the Jacobins. This paper argues against this binary interpretation of the political thought of the French Revolution, in favour of a third account of people’s power, Sieyes’ idea of pouvoir constituant. Traditionally, constituent power has been viewed as a variation of sovereignty, but I show it to be an independent conceptualisation of people’s power. Sieyes’ political theory led him to criticise and refuse contemporary theories of sovereignty in favour of what he understood as a fully modern account of people’s power. Based on extensive research in the archives, I show how Sieyes opposed the deployment of sovereignty by the revolutionary Assemblies and recommended replacing it with the idea of constituent power

Taming sovereignty: constituent power in nineteenth-century French political thought

Political theorists recently focussed their attention on the history of the idea of constituent power. This, they claim, shows that the notion of pouvoir constituant expressed the radical and absolute power of the sovereign people. In other words, constituent power pointed at the democratic and irresistible core of popular sovereignty. In this paper, I argue that the analysis of nineteenth-century French political thought offers a different account of constituent powerÕs history. Analysing archival resources, I show that in the aftermath of the French Revolution politicians and legal scholars relied on constituent power to tame the idea of sovereignty and the powers from it derived. First, during the Restoration constituent power was used to pose a limit to the power of the monarch. Second, throughout the July Monarchy scholars resorted to constituent power to claim that, even if the people was sovereign, its power was restricted to authorising the constitution. Third, during the Second Republic, jurists and politicians addressed the peopleÕs sovereign power in terms of constituent and constituted power. While the first was meant to disappear after the constitutionÕs approval, the second was a second-order power limited by the hierarchy of norms and the rigidity of the constitution

Elites, democracy, and parties in the Italian Constituent debates, 1946–1947

Discussions of the role and legitimacy of elites in democratic societies have rarely taken the shape of debates about the internal organization and working of political parties. Except for Michels and Ostrogorski, the party has not received much attention from theorists interested in the elitist dimensions of democratic politics. In this article, I purport to look at the party as a battling ground for competing accounts of the role elites should play in modern democratic societies. However, I will not focus on theoretical analyses of the party. Rather, I will look at how political actors discussed the party in the context of the constituent debates at the Italian Constituent Assembly of 1946–1947. These debates do not explicitly deal with the role elites should play in democratic society. Instead, they center on whether and how the constitution should regulate political parties. Yet while discussing details of legal regulation, the constituents offered contrasting understandings of modern democracy, competing accounts of the role of the masses as well as of the elites, and creative attempts to create stable compromises between the two in a changing society. It is through the reconstruction of these rather practical debates that I aim to uncover how one of the main questions of modern democracy—the relation between elites and masses—has been dealt with politically. This, I suggest, is not only interesting for political or historiographical reasons, but also has theoretical relevance. Not only it directly speaks to recent debates about partisanship and intraparty deliberation, but it is also by looking at political institutions and the reasoning behind their creation that one can recover complex political thinking.1 This, I believe, is made particularly interesting by the fact that it results from long and complicated processes of negotiation of contrasting values as well as from the translation of political ideals into working institutional structures. Reconstructing these processes of negotiation and translation is what I plan to do in this article

The impact of mental health recovery narratives on recipients experiencing mental health problems: Qualitative analysis and change model.

BACKGROUND: Mental health recovery narratives are stories of recovery from mental health problems. Narratives may impact in helpful and harmful ways on those who receive them. The objective of this paper is to develop a change model identifying the range of possible impacts and how they occur. METHOD: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with adults with experience of mental health problems and recovery (n = 77). Participants were asked to share a mental health recovery narrative and to describe the impact of other people's recovery narratives on their own recovery. A change model was generated through iterative thematic analysis of transcripts. RESULTS: Change is initiated when a recipient develops a connection to a narrator or to the events descripted in their narrative. Change is mediated by the recipient recognising experiences shared with the narrator, noticing the achievements or difficulties of the narrator, learning how recovery happens, or experiencing emotional release. Helpful outcomes of receiving recovery narratives are connectedness, validation, hope, empowerment, appreciation, reference shift and stigma reduction. Harmful outcomes are a sense of inadequacy, disconnection, pessimism and burden. Impact is positively moderated by the perceived authenticity of the narrative, and can be reduced if the recipient is experiencing a crisis. CONCLUSIONS: Interventions that incorporate the use of recovery narratives, such as peer support, anti-stigma campaigns and bibliotherapy, can use the change model to maximise benefit and minimise harms from narratives. Interventions should incorporate a diverse range of narratives available through different mediums to enable a range of recipients to connect with and benefit from this material. Service providers using recovery narratives should preserve authenticity so as to maximise impact, for example by avoiding excessive editing

Effects of 10 MeV proton irradiation on III-V solar cells

In this work we present our latest results and analysis of a 10 MeV proton irradiation experiment performed on III-V solar cells. A set of representative devices were irradiated for different fluences, including latticematched GaInP/GaInAs/Ge triple junction, GaInP/Ge double junction, and GaAs and Ge single junction solar cells. The methodology applied included the irradiation of two devices of each type; for a better control of the measurements, non-irradiated devices with the same characteristics of those irradiated were used as reference. The devices were monitored before and after each exposure by in-situ characterization of the electrical response under dark and under illumination using a solar simulator connected to the irradiation chamber through a borosilicate glass window. Ex-situ characterization techniques included dark and 1 sun AM0 illumination I-V curve and external quantum efficiency measurements. Furthermore, results of the numerical simulation of devices with D-AMPS-1D code are presented in order to give a physical interpretation of the results. DLTS spectroscopy preliminary results for single junction GaAs cells are also presented

A systematic review of communication interventions to help healthcare professionals discuss genetic testing for breast cancer

Purpose This systematic review examined educational training interventions for healthcare professionals (HCPs) discussing genetic testing and risk for hereditary breast cancer. There was a particular focus on the presence, and content, of communication elements within these packages. Methods Searches were run via CINAHL, EMBASE, PUBMED, and PsychInfo in February 2019 to identify training interventions available to HCPs with reference to communication skills. Studies were assessed for quality, with relevant intervention and outcome data extracted and synthesized. This review followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) statement and was registered on the PROSPERO database (CRD42019124010). Results of 3,988 items, seven papers, two of which were linked, were eligible for inclusion. There was a mix of randomized and single arm studies with web-based and face-to-face interventions. Content included an overview of genetics, hereditary and familial background, and recommended practice techniques. Outcomes focused on communication, self-efficacy, knowledge, and satisfaction. Interventions were designed for genetic counselors, physicians, primary care physicians (PCPs), medical students, and nurses. None of the papers featured oncologists or surgeons. Conclusions This review revealed an overall lack of publications which evaluated interventions to assist HCPs discussing hereditary breast cancer risk and testing. Studies failed to operationalize which ‘communication skills’ they included, nor did they consistently report randomization, outcome measures, or analysis. Discussing the need for, and management of, genetic testing for inherited cancer risk with individuals and their families can be challenging. As genetic testing in breast cancer becomes more common, the provision of specific communication-based training programs, with reference to genetic testing, risk assessments, and counseling skills is warranted

Comprehensive Network Analysis of Anther-Expressed Genes in Rice by the Combination of 33 Laser Microdissection and 143 Spatiotemporal Microarrays

Co-expression networks systematically constructed from large-scale transcriptome data reflect the interactions and functions of genes with similar expression patterns and are a powerful tool for the comprehensive understanding of biological events and mining of novel genes. In Arabidopsis (a model dicot plant), high-resolution co-expression networks have been constructed from very large microarray datasets and these are publicly available as online information resources. However, the available transcriptome data of rice (a model monocot plant) have been limited so far, making it difficult for rice researchers to achieve reliable co-expression analysis. In this study, we performed co-expression network analysis by using combined 44 K agilent microarray datasets of rice, which consisted of 33 laser microdissection (LM)-microarray datasets of anthers, and 143 spatiotemporal transcriptome datasets deposited in RicexPro. The entire data of the rice co-expression network, which was generated from the 176 microarray datasets by the Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC) method with the mutual rank (MR)-based cut-off, contained 24,258 genes and 60,441 genes pairs. Using these datasets, we constructed high-resolution co-expression subnetworks of two specific biological events in the anther, “meiosis” and “pollen wall synthesis”. The meiosis network contained many known or putative meiotic genes, including genes related to meiosis initiation and recombination. In the pollen wall synthesis network, several candidate genes involved in the sporopollenin biosynthesis pathway were efficiently identified. Hence, these two subnetworks are important demonstrations of the efficiency of co-expression network analysis in rice. Our co-expression analysis included the separated transcriptomes of pollen and tapetum cells in the anther, which are able to provide precise information on transcriptional regulation during male gametophyte development in rice. The co-expression network data presented here is a useful resource for rice researchers to elucidate important and complex biological events